10 Star Trek Comics Fans Need To Read

This series tells the story of Kirk's promotion and the final adventure of the legendary five year mission.

It does its best to represent itself as an unaired TOS series finale, building strong connections with the past and closing this chapter of several character arcs. It also takes full advantage of the comic medium, presenting a wild scenario that would be expensive to film today and would have been utterly impossible for the live action series to even attempt back in the sixties.

The series begins with Kirk's very first mission as captain of the Enterprise. A mission to a strange new (and artificial) world inhabited by giant insect-like creatures, some of which have evolved intelligence and build a society. A highlight of this first mission is the inclusion of Gary Mitchell, who fans will recognise from "Where No Man Has Gone Before".

The rest of the series deals with the fact that this primitive culture has inherited a technology so advanced that it could bring the galaxy to its knees. The Federation's flawed solution is to attempt to grant this society membership long before it's ready - an option which is better than the terrible alternative of invoking general order 24 and killing everything on the planet.

It falls a little flat in fully delivering the personal touches of character. There is a lot of big stuff happening but the alien characters never feel that interesting. Part of this is due to the fact that rather than focusing on one or two antagonists the story keeps jumping around. The Starfleet characters feel more developed but are very much in their assigned roles and not showing a lot of additional nuance.

In classic Trek fashion, this series presents a lot of heavy philosophical issues wrapped in a big, action intense plot. The artwork is top notch and the setting is visually interesting. it delivers on providing good reasons for Kirk to accept the much regretted promotion and for Spock and McCoy to both leave Starfleet.